


The Fool and the Magician

by kadollan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-05
Updated: 2011-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 06:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kadollan/pseuds/kadollan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war, Ron finds himself having a drink in Eastern Europe with the last person he'd ever have expected to share a toast with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fool and the Magician

**Author's Note:**

> Written for geewhiz on LJ in the 2009 weasley_fest. My original prompt was:
> 
> _Maybe incorporating something about The Fool? That would be cool. Whether through a character, the plot, theme, or mood, etc._
> 
> _If fic, you don't have to have the characters actually using tarot cards (I think I might prefer if you didn't), I'm more after the interpretations, legends, symbolism, etc. associated with The Fool and having you use those however you want to in your story._
> 
> Many thanks to my betas, cybermathwitch and jessofthebugs. Any remaining mistakes are my own. (Speaking of which, I used an online Polish translator, so if this really does say something about pig lard, you have my deepest apologies.)

Ron knocked back his third (or was it his fourth?) shot of the night. "So, I ended up leaving it all. The job, Hermione, everything. It just…none of it was what I thought it would be."

"Man up, Weasley, we’re none of us doing what we expected."

Ron sneered. "Too sorry your side didn’t win the war."

The other man rolled his eyes, and shook his head. "Well, I'm not. Voldemort had gone completely mad by the time it was over. But you’ve circumvented my point." Draco gestured with the hand that was holding his fire whiskey, very nearly spilling it. "The point I’m making is that the war bollocksed life up for everyone. You’re not alone there. And your face is going to freeze like that."

"What?" Ron’s mobile features shifted from annoyance to confusion and back again. Drinking with Draco (and when had he started thinking of him as Draco instead of "Malfoy"?) for the past few hours had taught him that about a quarter of what the blond said was always nonsense, and about a third was genuinely insightful. The trouble was that the remaining… wait, how much was a third plus a quart… Feck it, the problem was that with the remaining however much was left after you added a third plus a quarter and subtracted that from one, you couldn’t tell if it was nonsense or not.

Ron thought that maybe he’d had a bit too much to drink.

"Nevermind, s’not the point," Draco continued. "The point is that you seem to think that the world owes you something, just because of that one time where you helped save it. You should get the girl and go on to a fabulous career as a dashing and handsome auror, right?"

Ron snorted. "Sure, that would be nice. ‘Cept I washed out of auror training and the girl is off pursuing her own career. One of which I now do not have, she’d like to point out, in a very _concerned_ tone."

Draco waved this off. "She was always too good for you anyway. Better off without her."

"I really hate you."

"I know." Draco stared morosely down at his empty tumbler. "Why is my glass empty?"

There was really no explanation for why Ron was sitting in a run-down wizarding bar in Eastern Europe with Draco Malfoy. No explanation at all. Ron’s life had been perfect. Everything was just exactly the way he’d always dreamed it would be. He and Harry were training to be aurors, and Hermione was finally his girl.

And if he still woke up in the middle of the night with the shakes, seeing his friends die at the hands of Death Eaters, hearing Hermione’s screams echoing through Malfoy manor…well, that was to be expected, wasn’t it? Except the dreams had gotten worse, and now he couldn’t hear a _Stupefy!_ without flinching or breaking into a sweat. It was ridiculous really, he was twenty-two years old and he couldn’t even handle third year Defense stuff without falling apart.

Hermione’d been concerned of course, and would babble on about Post Traumatic Stress, or somesuch Muggle bollocks. It had gotten to where she couldn’t look at him at all without making that face—the one that told him that he’d ceased to be her lover and had become another problem to solve, something else to fix. He didn’t even blame her, not really. She always tried so hard to help, that sometimes she couldn’t see how she was making it worse.

So he’d left.

He dropped out of the Auror Academy, over Shackelbolt’s and Harry’s objections, and he’d broken it off with Hermione. Draco was right about that much at least, she was too good for him.

He’d started traveling with no clear destination in mind. He spent a week in Paris with Bill and Fleur (still sickeningly in love) and then moved on to Romania to visit Charlie. From Romania to Serbia, to Hungary and finally to Poland.

Where he’d wandered into a tiny dive, and found a bit of the past he’d been trying to run away from.

Their first instinct had been to draw wands and hurl insults. But somehow, and he still wasn't quite sure what had happened, he'd ended up at the bar matching Draco shot for shot, and spilling out the whole sordid story. Ron chalked it up to the subtle manipulation of the old bartender, coupled with a sudden and fierce homesickness.

For while he’d always despised Draco, at least he was from _home_. He could listen to Draco’s ridiculous drawl all night (and had done) for no other reason than to hear someone speaking English.

Draco cleared his throat, and suddenly Ron snapped back to the present. "My glass is still empty. And you," he narrowed his eyes and pointed at Ron, "and you are worrying about what’s past again."

"I’m not. I’m just…well, I was wondering what I’m doing here, I guess." Ron shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. "I mean, what am I doing in a bar in the one place that is geographically most distant from ‘my life as it should have been’ having a drink-"

"Or six," Draco helpfully interrupted.

"-or six, with you of all people." Ron shook his head, "it defies logic."

"Well, logic wasn’t helping you any was it? And what do you mean with me? Just because we hated each other at school, and well, there was the war that we weren’t on the same side of, but just because of that we can’t have a drink?" Draco tried to take another swallow, but his glass was still empty. He gestured imperiously at the barkeep, who had been polishing the same bit of bar for at least thirty minutes with a grey rag that Ron was trying hard not to examine too closely. The grizzled old man grunted, seemingly unimpressed, and topped off both of their drinks.

"Your problem Weasley, or well one of your problems anyway... we haven't time to deal with them all, but your problem is that you had this idea in your head about what your life would be like, and then you decided that it didn't fit, and that you didn't want it after all. So you walked out, and you have this hole in your life where The Plan used to be."

"How could you possibly know all that?" Ron shook his head, and realized that Draco was getting ahead of him. Quickly he downed his shot, and mimed leaving the bottle behind towards the old bartender.

Draco rolled his eyes, and muttered something that sounded like "barbarian" under his breath. He smiled charmingly at the old man and said, _"Sprawiać przyjemność pozostawiają butelkę."_

The bartender spat on the floor and scowled, but he left the bottle behind.

"What did you say?"

"Your first born daughter smells of pig-lard. What do you think I said? I asked him to leave the bottle. Don't tell me you came into a foreign country with no idea how to speak the language? That is so like you."

Ron scowled defensively. "Look. I didn't know I would end up here, I'm just..." he sighed. "I don't know what I am. Well," he looked down at his hands and blinked two or three times. "Well. I am drunk. I do know that."

"What you are, is on a journey. You don't know who you are, and you don't know where you are going."

"That is really not helpful."

"It wasn't meant to be. Helpful costs extra."

"So what should I do?" Ron couldn't believe he was asking Draco of all people for advice. This had been one of the strangest nights of his life.

"You start. You do the next thing. And then you do the next after that. You don't start out life knowing who you are and what you'll be. Nobody does. They just think they do."

"That is..." Ron struggled a moment. "That is either really deep or complete bullshit. I can't tell which."

Draco nodded. _"Nasdrovia!"_

He never did get around to asking what Draco was doing in Poland.


End file.
